My Sister's Ex by Cydney Rax Page A

go fish for another man in that big dating pool that’s out there. And if you luck out, you can find someone as good as Mr. Williams. How about that?”
    That’s it! I’ve had enough!
    I stand directly in her face, not caring how loudly I yell or how crazy I sound.
    “You are such a fool, Marlene. This man is not really into you. You’ll see.”
    “You’re a jealous hater.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “You are. Don’t blame me because you couldn’t hold on to your man.”
    “Ah, did you hear what you just said? You said ‘your’ man. You know Jeff and I still have some unfinished business.”
    “You finished your business with him when you told the dude you wanted out.”
    “But Marlene, common sense would tell you that I haven’t completely gotten over him.” I don’t like admitting this, but it’s important that she knows the truth. “After we broke up, you’d ask me how I was doing. I’d tell you that I miss Jeff.”
    “If you really missed him, you would have tried to repair your relationship with him back then. And you didn’t. So that window of opportunity is now closed. Shut tight. Locked.”
    I just look at her like she’s a candidate for the insane asylum, because that’s how she’s behaving. Sometimes I wonder if women are genetically predisposed to screw up, to lose our minds over a man.
    “Fuck you, Marlene. Because that’s all you’re going to be good for to Jeff.”
    “You’s a rude SOB!”
    “Oh so now you’re cussing, too?”
    “‘SOB’ is an acronym. Acronyms aren’t cuss words.”
    “Well, ain’t that a B, you MF?” I say, trying to be smart.
    “Whatever, Rachel. He’s an ex. You made him an ex. And you’ll be better off when you start acting like an ex.”
    “Marlene, that is so stupid. Do you know how stupid you sound? This entire issue is about integrity, which I know you can’t even spell or define.”
    “I’m the one with an associate’s degree, remember?” She’s rubbing that in my face because I enrolled at San Jacinto Community College for one semester but didn’t return. I gota low grade in algebra and felt so depressed I didn’t want to take any classes.
    “A lot of stupid people have degrees, remember?”
    She knows I’m referring to her mama. Loretta has a bachelor’s degree, but no one is impressed because it’s from the great University of Phoenix. Okay, so everyone isn’t bright enough to graduate from Harvard, but at least show some effort, no matter what college you attend. Loretta, poor thing, paid cash for other people to write her papers. That figures. But her shortchanged education didn’t stop her from getting a job as an assistant counseling and crisis manager down at the women’s center. For the life of me I can’t figure out how anybody could hire a woman who still hangs panty hose to dry on her front porch. She’s fifty and wears miniskirts and sequined blouses with pink and yellow plastic bangles hanging on her arms, like, a total of ten or twelve. Her arms are too thick to pull off a fashionable and respectful look, but you can’t tell that to Loretta. This woman feels she can do whatever she wants, and if it annoys you? “Your problem!”
    Selfish, selfish, selfish.
    Like mother, like daughter.
    “Okay, joke’s over now, Marlene. You really can’t be this cruel, insensitive, and selfish. Can you?”
    “As long as Jeff doesn’t mind, why should I?”
    “I can’t believe you’d take my leftovers.”
    “Shoot, sometimes leftovers taste good.”
    “When I give you a taste of your own medicine, I wonder what you’ll say then.”
    “If that’s your way of threatening me, bring it on, Sis. Bring it on.”
    I have been pleading with Marlene a good twenty minutes. It’s apparent she’s too stubborn to change her mind. So I gotta change my strategy. I leave her room and glance at mywatch. It’s only eight A.M. That leaves me enough time to do what I want to do. I rush to my closet and select an off-white chiffon